No One Wants to Be ‘the Next Square’ Anymore
Is the Magic of Unicorns Fading?
A year ago, being known as the “Square of Canada” was a badge of honor. Payfirma Corp.’s smartphone-compatible credit card readers were in high demand, and local investors supplied the Vancouver startup with $13 million in funding. Like Jack Dorsey, the chief executive officer of Square Inc. (and Twitter Inc.), Payfirma CEO Michael Gokturk said he was aiming for “hypergrowth.” Gokturk doubled his staff to 80, including a chief operating officer formerly of Intuit Inc., and started talking about an initial public offering.
But by November, being the “Square of” anywhere suddenly wasn’t such a hot title. That month, Square sold shares in an IPO that valued the company at about $2.9 billion, less than half its private valuation from a year earlier. In the runup to the IPO, analysts began questioning whether the card-reader maker should really be priced like a high-flying tech company. Its stock price is hovering around $13, right where it was after its first day of trading. Square declined to comment.